


"He Dreams He's Awake"

by EA Karras and Agirl_gonemad (Anne)



Category: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Alternate Reality, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - College/University, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 17:32:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anne/pseuds/EA%20Karras%20and%20Agirl_gonemad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The moment John woke up was also the moment he realized that something had to have gone wrong."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The moment John woke up was also the moment he realized that something had to have gone wrong. Well, maybe ‘woke up’ was the wrong term, considering he seemed to be standing, but either way he came to the sudden realization of self-awareness without warning. 

It didn’t help that he woke up to a lecture hall full of people staring at him. 

Moments pass. Several of the students...he assumes they are students, anyway...shift in their seat. Someone murmurs. Someone giggles. Peripheral vision tells him that he’s up there alone. 

Finally, someone speaks: “So are we done, for today?”

“Yes.” Because what else can John say? He has no recall of why he’s here. Or why everyone is dressed up like it’s hippie day, or something. Or, you know, what is going on in general. Where here is, even. “That’s all for today.”

People start talking and file out. He wonders if he should follow or start going through the bag on the desk behind him for answers or something. 

One girl, however, does not leave. And while she waves at a few of the students who are leaving, could one really say that they’re waving back to her? Not..exactly? One or two of them make a motion, but. 

Still, she smiles at him, brightly. “That was an interesting class.” 

“...oh good?” Of course the first thing he comes across is a faculty ID that says it’s Spring 1970 with his name on it. So that elicits some staring at a little plastic card. “I mean...did I teach it?”

That, apparently, gets a smile and a laugh. “Of course! Who else?” 

“You never know.” A little more rummaging gets him a class syllabus. Art as Protest. Special topics in art with a humanities requirement. “...huhn.”

“I would always know.” Pointing at his name on the top of the syllabus, right under the class title. Wasn’t she over across the room a few minutes ago? Perhaps not.

Still, he leans back a bit and blinks at her. “Photographic memory?” He nods. “Yeah I see it...I just don’t get it. Am I dreaming?”

“Something like that.” She tilts her head at him, shrugging. “Do you think you’re dreaming?”

“Are you a philosophy major?” Even in dreams, there are rules. “Somewhat.”

“You could say that. Everyone’s dreaming. Everyone’s awake.” 

“Okie dokie. I hope I have a planner in here somewhere...”

“I’m sure that anything you would have, you have.”

“...yeah?” A little more digging. “Don’t you have a class after this?”

He may even find it, deep at the bottom of that bag. “It’s possible.”

“But is it likely?” Well, then. Find it he does. 

“Oh, sure. Anything’s likely.” Smiling, brightly. “See? There you are.”

“Here I am.” Flipping through it. Dinner with Riley, so there’s something familiar, but the address is not. “So since I might be dreaming I think I don’t know your name?”

At least she doesn’t seem to mind that he doesn’t know it? “Allison.” 

“Nice to meet you.” He’s even more confused by the date, when he actually takes it in. “Thought you couldn’t read in dreams...”

“Maybe you’re special.” 

The look he gives her is a long one. “Maybe.”

“Assuming it’s a dream.”

“Do we have these conversations often?”

“Not recently.”

“...okay.” He wonders if he’s dreaming and going crazy or what?

“Don’t worry, Professor. Everything’s going to be fine.” 

“I’ll have to take your word for it. Thanks, Allison.”

“You’re welcome.” Another smile. “I probably should let you get ready for...dinner.” Looking at his book over his shoulder. 

“Thank you.” Giving her another look before he decides to just gather everything up, get a coffee, and sort himself out from there. 

At least coffee is considerably cheaper in the 1970s? She waves at him as he goes, but really makes no move to leave his classroom until he has left the classroom. 

Things he doesn’t notice right away. Things he does notice? The clothes. Good lord, the clothes and the colors make him wonder if every fashion designer in his dream isn’t high out of their goddamned minds. 

He only has an hour or so before he’s supposed to meet up with Riley and everything else, at least, seems to be following it’s own logic. Except for the intense feeling that he’s walked into some sort of entertainment program of one sort or another. 

It’s entirely possible that he spends at least five minutes looking for recording devices. 

But eventually he has to go to this dinner, right? Asking a teacher’s assistance where he might’ve parked his car helps. He has the keys. He remembers how to drive it. He just doesn’t remember ever purchasing it. Or being a professor. Or any of this. 

So, needless to say, he goes into dinner in a rather weird mood, but he’s still happy to see Riley. Even if he’s dreaming. Though the conversations at dinner are strange. Riley doesn’t live with him, which doesn’t fit with his memory, and seems to think that his wondering if he’s dreaming is a sign that he’s just not getting enough sleep. 

It might, perhaps, stand to reason. But then again, maybe it wouldn’t? If it’s a dream, it’s a very detailed one, isn’t it? 

The girl, at least, does appear to have some sort of existence outside of the classroom. A listing in the student directory, registration in other classes. Not that this is proof of whether or not this is a dream, but it must mean something yes? 

Does he see her again before his next class? That’s harder to say. 

Probably not, considering that the day in between is spent in a hospital ER, claiming that he thinks he might have a concussion just so he can get checked out. Because in dreams? You don’t fall asleep and wake up to the exact same, impossible scenario. Honestly he’d feel better if something really impossible happened, like a fifty-foot lizard rampaging downtown. Unfortunately? No such luck. It is still spring of 1970 - he still lives alone - Riley claims they met through a blind date hookup, not in school like he remembers.

Granted he remembers a future nearly a hundred years beyond the present of his “dream” so that’s problematic too. Considering he has no proof. No reason to believe this isn’t real except for his strong conviction that it isn’t. 

He hasn’t quite gotten to the full-blown paranoia stage where he starts looking to make sure that everyone is real. He does, however, decide that he might as well figure out what the hell this thing is he’s supposedly doing for a living. 

His apartment is plenty helpful for that, at least. There are plenty of graded and ungraded papers, syllabii from previous semesters, notes from students, notes to students. That’s at least a little helpful, isn’t it?

It is. It gives him a starting point (and a seating chart). Grading the assignments proves to be several hours during which he stops worrying about his clearly degenerative mental state and can just...do something. Which may or may not be useful, but, hey.

John does notice that he’s only been teaching about a year and a half. There are photographs from his own graduations, a completed PhD which completely boggles his mind, and a half-ignored journal from several years prior. There’s a postcard that confirms Riley’s first-date story, and a letter from his mother with no return address. Photographs of his parents with him. The happy family he doesn’t remember ever having. 

Something else he notices, but doesn’t really process: Allison Young has taken one class that he’s either taught or TA’d every semester of his entire teaching career at this college. Granted, she’s one of maybe four or five repeat students, but still. It strikes him the next day when he knows exactly where to look for her amongst the seats as people file in.

And there she is, isn’t she? Third seat in the third row and smiling just as much as she did the last time he saw her. Talking to another student, until John actually looks at her, and then the other student sort of wanders off to his seat as if he weren’t talking to her at all. 

So maybe that’s a little strange. 

He’ll write it off as a trick of his mind. Besides, for all he knows the conversation finished. 

The lecture, this time around, has a lot less poignant pauses while he gathers his thoughts, but he can tell from a few glances that it’s also a little different from his standard at this point. A lot more engagement. It’s less lecture and more polling for information for him, really. 

Not that anyone complains, really? It’s sort of like a minivacation in the middle of the day for them. They answer all of his questions as best they can. And Allison? Takes copious notes. 

Something he finds...interesting because it’s not like he thinks there’s a lot to take notes on. So. He waits to see if she offers some weird, quirky insight to his class at the end.

She does stay after, doesn’t she? “Did you learn what you wanted to learn?”

“In what respect?” The non-lecture, or his still waking dream life?

“With the questions. I don’t think that they noticed. Much.”

A blink. “Are you sure there was something for them to notice? You took quite a lot of notes for a lecture that was more questions than dictation.”

Notes that she’ll hand over. “In case you forget.” So she basically transcribed the entire lecture. 

More blinking. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“I don’t mind.”

“...has this happened before?”

“To you?” 

“Well to anyone, let’s start broad.”

“That seems likely.”

“Narrower. That you know of?”

“Not that I know. Personally.”

“Is there any point during my teaching the last few years where I seemed to be suffering from amnesia, short or long-term?”

“Not in the past few years.”

“Have you known me longer than that?”

“No, I haven’t known you longer than a few years.”

“...okay then.” Frowning at the notes. “I’ll make a copy and return these to you next class.”

Smiling at him. “All right. Thank you!” 

“You’re welcome.” Sometimes, he thinks, her cheerfulness must be unsettling to others.

Quite possibly, quite likely. She just smiles at him for another moment before heading back out. If he doesn’t have more questions, anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

When he gets home after a meeting about student protesting military recruitment, John decides to start keeping a diary. Or a journal, anyway. Since he didn’t have anything capable of copying Allison’s verbatim notes on the class at home, and he was uncertain about the prospect of seeing a psychiatrist for his sense of...illusion? Mental detachment? Writing things down seemed like a better idea. 

By the next week he’s filled one small ‘school notebook’ and is a third of the way through a new one. Everything different, everything strange, he takes note of. Like the fact that he owns very few clothes that don’t fit, but usually there’s more than that. For anyone, right? Or how without knowing each and every detail of each other’s childhoods that his relationship with Riley seems very...limited. Fun, but nothing like what he has back home. He can’t confide in her, just call for the sake of hearing her voice. He finds he has secrets from her by default, and he’s not sure how he feels about that.

All his life that he can remember, Riley has been the one person he hasn’t kept any secrets from because she lived most of his life alongside him. It had never occurred to him before how different things might be if they hadn’t had those childhood bonds to pull them tightly close to one another. 

He takes notes on his students, his lectures, how poor his grasp of history is for this time period he’s in but how very little that seems to affect his ability to find and follow the diagram he’d apparently set up for the semester. He takes notes on Allison’s cheerful demeanor and her extremely focused attitude towards him that he never actually seems to notice until she’s gone. 

He sees, most likely, a great deal of the students wandering around campus or even the town. If he really watches, it’s possible he may see them more than once throughout a day. Allison, however, he won’t see all that often. During class, of course, and maybe before or after. But around town? 

Not really.

Which is a little odd, isn’t it? It takes another few weeks to confirm this, but yes - save what might be on the news or other media outlets, he essentially sees the same faces over and over again. The student body, which, granted is a large campus, plus employees and neighbors to places he frequents. Going somewhere new either gets him lost or just has him interacting with a different group of mostly familiar faces. 

It’s a little strange. A little stranger, maybe, that Allison is pointedly missing from this system. He runs into Riley on accident more often than he sees her and Riley doesn’t work at his school. So what does that mean?

He begins to worry that his...mental break is starting to find a new way to be complicated, by creating this fixation on a student, and that’s enough during the spring break to make an appointment with one of the staff psychologists on campus. See if he can’t talk his way through this.

Does it help? Or is it more likely that the staff psychologist that he gets is one of the many familiar faces that he sees around town? 

Either way, he’ll find that when he arrives at the office, the clerk at the front desk is, somehow, Allison. Still smiling and cheerful. 

That gives him pause, doesn’t it? “...I didn’t know you worked here.”

“Oh yes. For a few months now.”

“I see. Uhm, I have an appointment.”

“All right. Three o’clock?”

“Yeah.” Could he be more awkward? For some reason her being here is very unsettling and he can’t put his finger on why. Maybe because he wanted to discuss her, but now?

The only thing keeping him from turning around is the fact that he’ll probably have to explain why he did that. The leaving part, anyway.

She certainly wouldn’t tell the psychiatrist that he did. “You can go in, if you like. He’s very nice.”

“...thanks.” So that will be something. John ends up giving a severely edited version of what he planned on talking about, definitely, and is a little worried that this man is going to think him insane, suggest that he go on administrative leave, and then John will be stuck.

In a dream.

With no job. 

Should that idea bother him as much as it does? 

Maybe. Because what if it isn’t a dream? That would be pretty bad, wouldn’t it? But at least the doctor is fairly nice, and pretty much just tells John to do what he’s been doing. Keep notes, all of that. 

“What if I never remember the documented history I have, though? What if I spend the rest of my life remembering a life no one else can recall?”

“Then we’ll find a way for you to make a new life. New memories, and a new history.”

“I like my job,” he admits hesitantly. “My students, the subject. I’d rather not give that up, even if...whatever is happening to me doesn’t improve.”

“You’re concerned I’ll recommend a leave of absence?”

John nods. “Maybe that’s silly. Since part of me is emphatically insistent that this is not real. But I still enjoy it, I still...take pride in my work.”

“Is this affecting your work? Have you received any complaints?”

“No, not at all.” Shaking his head. “Apparently this year’s review is not until the fall, but...nothing has been said to me?”

“If it does, then we’ll evaluate it then. How is that?”

“That’s fine.” Slightly relieved.

“All right. Then, how about we meet in a few weeks, keep talking?”

“That sounds fine.” Nodding. “Two weeks?”

“Two weeks. Same time.”

“I’ll see you then.” Standing and shaking the man’s hand seems appropriate, doesn’t it? John had almost forgotten that Allison Young would be outside. 

Almost. 

“Was I right?” is what she asks when he comes out of the office. 

“He is nice, yes.” A slight smile.

“Good. When does he want you back?”

“Two weeks. Same time.”

“Okay.” She’ll make that appointment for him, and hand him a card. 

“Thank you.” He wonders what Riley would think if she saw this, and frowns, slightly. Neither of them have spoken to each other since the middle of the week before. 

Maybe she’d never have cause to see it anyway. He’s not entirely sure where they stand. 

“Is everything else all right?” She’s watching him carefully now, somehow.

“Nothing you should worry about, I think?”

“Oh, why is that?”

“You’re still my student.”

“Or a dream.” 

“You’re still a student in my dream, possibly. Student, however, is the important part.”

“Students can’t talk?”

“...no, they can.”

“So, what’s the problem?”

“Relationship...stuff? Nothing huge or disastrous just a lot of uncertainty.”

“Maybe you should talk to her?”

“I should.”

“Why don’t you?”

“I’m nervous.”

“Why are you nervous?” 

“Because things are...different.”

“That’s true. But isn’t that more reason to talk?”

“I’m not very good at explaining.” He isn’t even sure what he wants to say to Riley. 

“If it were a dream, you could just forget about her. Right?”

“I haven’t forgotten about anyone.” Frowning at her.

“I know that.”

“How do you know that?” 

“If you had, why would you be worried?”

“If something happened to you, I’d worry, and I don’t remember you.”

“Maybe you made me up.”

“That’d be very worrisome.”

“Why is that?”

“It’s complex.”

“I’m smarter than I appear.”

“I’m worse at explaining than you might think.”

“Maybe. It’s hard to know.” 

“I would be concerned about dreaming you up, honestly. You act like deus ex machina, and I don’t know why I’d imagine that.”

“Maybe you wanted someone to talk to that wouldn’t have an outside opinion.”

“It would have made more sense to make you a coworker then, and not someone in a position that immediately made me uncomfortable to confide in.”

“That would make more sense. But is that what you’d do?”

He stares at her. “This isn’t fair.”

“What isn’t fair?” 

“Your position and analysis.”

“Is my analysis incorrect?”

“Possibly.”

“Likely?”

“Very.”

“Well, then.”

“Well, then what?”

“Then, you should be able to talk to me.”

“Maybe.”

“Will you?’

“Maybe.” Oh, John.

Still, she does smile again. “Okay.”

“Either way, I’m not going to discuss it here.” He shrugs. “I’ll see you, Allison.”

“I’ll see you too, Professor.” 

John nods and leaves. He thinks to call Riley but the conversation is pretty mundane, trying to figure out some day to spend time together but nothing seems to really work out.


	3. Chapter 3

So that’s interesting, isn’t it? 

Is John even remotely surprised when Allison is there, same seat, on the first day of the next semester’s class? Because there she is. 

He isn’t. Granted, he spent the summer journaling and attempting to explain to Riley how different things feel. It’s hard, because trying to tell her how he remembers things keeps getting sidetracked and mixed up with life here. A completely different childhood for both of them, a completely different set of lives. 

By the time the fall semester comes around they’re friends, but that’s about it. Not that it really makes him unhappy. He can still talk to her...somewhat. 

It’s just strange. 

Strange, but at least she’s still in his life? Though, given the tendency of faces to repeat in town, would he maybe not still be if they didn’t talk? The only face that doesn’t repeat is Allison’s, and he does not see much of her over the summer, unless it’s at the psychiatrist’s office. 

Not until the next semester starts, of course. Then, she’s there. Same chair, same notebook, same oddly cheerful smile. Is it the same class? 

He has to double-check that it isn’t. But this is, in fact, a different class. One about displaced artwork through war and time. All topics he's interested in, at least, so it's not like it's difficult to teach.

He's still very unsure about Allison. About talking to her, confiding in her. She is still a student; he is still in a position where the line between friendship and inappropriate behavior can be very thin and easy to cross.

He realizes that to even be so preoccupied with the risk means he may already be in trouble.

Very true, all of those things. And she did point out, after all, that if this was a dream, why would he make her someone he couldn’t really confide in without risk? 

Still, after class, she stops by his desk. As she always seems to do, doesn’t she? “You seem a lot more comfortable with lecturing this semester.” 

"I'm a little more used to it," he admits, and diverts his gaze to various add slips and other paperwork. "Are you going to the opening of the grad students' show on Friday?"

“Yes, it seems likely. Are you?”

"It seems likely, yes." Snorting at himself.

Well, that gets a brief frown, doesn’t it? “Shouldn’t I go?”

"Why couldn't we both go?" Trying to read a student's name to add them to the roster and having difficulty.

“I don’t know. Is something wrong?” Not even looking at the paper, really. “Paul Hanson.”

Nodding and writing the name in. "Nothing. I'll see you there, then."

“All right.” A very, very confused girl heads out, then. 

"Sorry," he says just as she approaches the door. "You confuse me, sometimes. You're either really vague or nearly reading my mind."

“It’s not intentional.” Whether she means the vaguenes, or ‘reading his mind’, that’s...well. Vague. “I see what you see.”

Then why does it happen is on the tip of his tongue when that second statement hits him. "What?"

“I see what you see,” she repeats. She could mean it figuratively. Maybe. Likely? Maybe not.

"Why?" He may have given up on her being specific. Maybe.

Hesitating. “I’m not certain what you mean.”

"Why do you see what I see?" Not how. He's not even sure he cares about how.

“Because that’s important.” 

"I deserve a better understanding of what's going on here. Either I'm dreaming, which is problematic, because this makes too much sense for a dream, and I don't like the idea that I would overhaul a life I was comfortable with so...so thoroughly for a dream. Or this is real, and I've become infatuated with a student who talks in riddles at me, or there is a third option that you are privy to and I'm not."

“Insanity, a medical experiment, a trick somehow,’” Reciting some of the things from his notebook. Continuing on in that fashion for a while. Things he’s written that she could not had read. “What do you mean, infatuated?”

He pinches his nose. "Stop that. What does it sound like I mean? No, I don't write it down. I'd rather be considered crazy than unethical."

“That doesn’t make much sense to me.” She stays where she is, by the door.

"You're not a figment of my imagination." A figment would laugh, lead him on, or be immediately weirded out. "Whatever this is you're used to it, I think. But I'm not. So when you're around, part of me can't focus on anything else, anyone else...and you only talk to me. No one talks to us both at the same time. So you're probably the only other 'real' person. Whatever that means."

Instead of weirded out, she just looks...concerned. Perhaps over this conversation. Perhaps about something else entirely. “What do you think that it means?”

"I don't know. I'm more interested in what you think."

“I’m not certain if this topic of conversation is beneficial. But I’m not sure.”

"If I'm dreaming or dead or being experimented on so be it. I just want to know."

There, she looks alarmed. “You aren’t dead!” 

"Then tell me what has happened to me. Please?"

More hesitation. “Number 10 on your list. In a coma.”

"...oh." He wonders how long but suddenly he's not so sure it matters. 

“Everything here is....a simulation. To keep your mind occupied.”

"I always got the impression that neural stims were more...I don't know. Realistic to the user?"

“There was an error. A glitch.”

"I see." He frowns at his papers. "I'll see you Friday, then."

“That’s possible, yes.”

"Right." He doesn't look up, even when the door shuts and then opens again.

“John.” Not Allison, then. His therapist, of all people. “We believe that we have come up with a solution.”

"...what?" Startled? Most definitely. "I don't...I don't think I need one? Anymore..."

“You do. When the phone rings, answer it.” 

"What phone?" But his therapist is suddenly gone, and there's a bright blue phone on the desk. The kind from his office in Tangiers, not the sort from 1970s America.

It rings seven times before he finally gives up and answers it. Wakes up in a medical facility to Riley's worried face and his therapist's expectant one. No Allison. He doesn't voice his disappointment, or even let himself think about it directly when Riley hugs him and starts to cry. "Hi? Am I late?" It gets her to laugh, which is good. He has a lot to catch up on, namely what happened to land him in a hospital in the first place and how long he's been here.

Allison left his classroom, of course, a little well...more than a little upset when she saw his therapist go into the classroom. She knew what that meant, instinctively. She knew what the therapist told him. After all, she saw what he saw. At least until he answered the phone and woke up. Then, it was like being cut off from something vital. 

The city shut down around her. Everyone stopping midstep on campus and vanishing in groups. The people, then the buildings. Until nothing was left but white space. A table, a chair, a white room and her. She wasn’t smiling then. There was no one to be cheerful for, was there? 

It's explained to him that he's been in the hospital a little over a year. The political uprising the government had been worried about occurred six months earlier than expected, which is how he ended up in the middle of contested territory when war broke out, instead of safe at the University in Nice, France.

He asks about Allison, during reintegration therapy, and is told that she's a remote intelligence, used during neural simulations to keep an eye on the patients. Smarter and more personable than strict AI, he's told, and he's weirdly upset by this. That she wasn't one of the doctors, someone he could actually talk to.

More things he doesn't say. Or write down.

After a while, about halfway through his medical leave before he has to decide if he wants to go back to the field or take an offered teaching position, he and Riley actually talk. About her feelings while he was in a coma, when she was warned that he might wake up a different person, or not wake up at all. They decide to take a break. She moves out. He doesn't feel any better, and dreams about empty classrooms and battlefield graveyards.

She’s in that white room for a while before they give her things to occupy her time. Her mind. Books to read, in a manner of speaking. Puzzles to complete. Things to ensure that she’s kept thinking. Every so often, someone comes in to speak with her. They don’t feel entirely here, but is she?

Of course she asks about John. If he’s all right, if he’s awake. Once, she wonders if he’s asked about her. If he wonders who she is, or where. She’s told that they told him she’s a remote intelligence, which is true in a sort of way. False in another. Better that he think she’s a computer, than what she really is. A girl, in a coma. A living computer. 

It’s unlikely she’ll wake up, anyway, isn’t it?  
‘  
Unlikely, yes. Impossible? Maybe not.

He takes the teaching job. Riley moves to Costa Rica and he spends more time alone than not, except for class time, meetings. When there's a summer conference in New York, he almost doesn't go, but his reintegration therapist insists, citing that she's worried he might be depressed because of all of the changes in his life.

There was, apparently, some consideration of having her interact with another patient, and she wasn’t particularly looking forward to that. She sort of missed John, which was...strange. Strange enough that the relief she felt when she could suddenly hear him talking was overwhelming. A lecture, she thought, but not one she’d heard before. 

Something more recent, then? 

Much more recent; a guest lecture he did for a psychology and ethics class, discussing dreams, altered mind states, and the definition of reality. He talks about losing intangible things and how 'real' cannot be limited to that which can only be interacted with while the conscious mind is active.

He tells a story, at one point, about having to get rid of a phone in his office that had been a graduation gift - traveled the world with him - because it suddenly became synonymous with the loss of intangible things.

She wonders if that means his life in the construct, or if he means her. He’d talked about infatuation, but she still didn’t really understand what that meant. Especially since she knows that he has a girlfriend. 

Still, the more she thinks about him, the more lectures they give her to listen to the more and more she wishes that she could wake up. 

Finally in one of the files she's played, someone asks him about his experience with altered reality and neural simulations. He explains that he'd never used them before he was hospitalized, and hasn't used them sense. Some back and forth about the setting "I should've known something was off when it was supposed to be 1970 but no one offered me drugs for months" gets some laughter, but the telling part is when he talks about waking up. The feeling of leaving something behind, unfinished.

Would you go back, he's asked. "That would be dangerous, I think. There was a conversation I'd wanted to have...I don't know that it would work, really." Someone points out that having conversations with neural constructs while not in a sim is what originally made people realize it was addictive and he laughs. "I'm not that lucky, or perhaps that unfortunate. I have no idea how it would've gone."

The idea of him thinking of her as nothing more than a neural construct? Is highly upsetting. Upsetting enough that it makes her feel light. Or sparked, or any other sort of term she’s not sure exactly describes what she’s feeling. Whatever it is, the room grays and turns white again. Blackens and turns white again. Goes almost clear, somehow with what looks like framing and faces and tubes beyond that. 

What that means, she doesn’t know. 

There’s a lot of commotion after that. Apparently she’s awake - beating all medical odds, but proving one doctor’s theory about emotional connections and stimuli being necessary for bringing people out of her particular condition (once the rest of the medical issues are appropriately treated, of course). There’s a lot of history, personal and otherwise, to catch her up upon isn’t there? Not to mention physical therapy, recovery therapy. Sorting out where her finances stand, since she’s the last living member of her family. Things like that. 

The intern who’d originally gotten access to John’s lectures continues to bring them, only this time she can watch instead of just listen. 

She’s thankful for that. Something to focus on other than the fact that her family is dead. How long she’s been in a coma, an apparently irreversible one. That she’s basically alone in some strange world, instead of a vaguely manipulable world or the white room. 

She doesn’t really even remember what happened to put her in this position, nor does she think that she wants to. She watches his lectures, goes through therapy, physical or otherwise. It takes a while to even be able to stand, much less walk. 

When she can stand, she ends up roomed with another one of the center’s interns so that she can adjust to living as opposed to being a resident of the long-term care ward. There are day trips and dinners with other people. Social integration, to be honest, though no one comes out and calls it that. “This is about you being alive, not just about you getting better,” her roommate tells her. Allison might be a medical miracle, but no one wants to treat her as though she’s only that. 

That gives her some relief, doesn’t it? Being what she’d been for years, a living computer of sorts, she’d expected to be stared at. So social integration is...nice. 

Still, she wonders about John almost constantly. Keeps listening to his lectures, and at one of those dinners, she hears about this conference in New York. Here’s that he’ll be giving a lecture there. 

“You should go,” her roommate tells her later. “I’ll clear the medical checkin for the week if you promise to call me when you get there and if you experience any discomfort or disorientation. There’s a specialist there you can see.”

She thinks about it, but nods. “You’re sure it’ll be okay?” She wonders if she’ll even see him. If he’d even want to see her. What he’d think, if he did.

“I think if you don’t go you’ll wish you did.” Her roommate smiles. 

So she smiles back, doesn’t she? “Okay. I’ll go.”

At least traveling there isn’t terribly hard, and her roommate gets her a pass to the conference fairly easily, along with a nearby hotel room. “It’s a good luck present,” Allison is told, and given a hug before the bullet train leaves. 

It’s mostly a symposium on art: technology, history, preservation. John’s speaking engagement is about the series of events that led up to him being hospitalized, but not really from a personal standpoint as much as a professional one. Discussing what happens to art and other historical items when an area is engaged in warfare, how to preserve the historical art and the concurrent art being represented during that time. Things like that. He looks a cross between images of his lectures from the university in France and the neural simulation. Obviously someone has given up on cutting their hair. 

It’s probably a little nice to hear him in person, too, speaking English again. 

He doesn’t see her during the discourse, though whether or not that has to do with not looking for her - a habit that took him months to break honestly, once he began teaching in earnest - or where she’s seated, or something else entirely is hard to say. But when the panel ends he hangs back, naturally, to talk to people about his speech or answer and ask questions. He sees her for a moment out of the corner of his eyes, mentally writes it off as some sort of...brain hiccup and that she’s probably someone else, so he just smiles briefly and then is distracted by another question. 

Habit, or something, has her taking copious notes during his lecture. She doesn’t even really think about it. But she didn’t sit in the front row, as she did in the simulated world. Somewhere near the back, because she doesn’t want to startle him. 

But as the lecture ends, she gets more and more nervous. What if he thinks he’s in another simulation, when he sees her? What if he doesn’t believe she’s who she is? What if he doesn’t want to see her at all? 

All things she wishes she’d thought of before she’d come here. So she pretty much sticks in her seat, watching him talk to students.

Eventually they all file out and he gathers his things before he spots her again. Stares a bit, before climbing the rows to sit down in front of her, though he turns backwards in his seat to keep staring. “Stand up?”

She stares at him for a moment, unsure of what he wants her to do that for. But. After some hesitation, she does. “Why, Professor?” 

He stands up too and moves so that they’re both on the same level. “You’re taller.” A laugh. 

Blinking. “I’m taller?”

“Than I remember.” Biting his lip. Is he going to ask if this is real? No. Not really. Part of him has already decided that if it isn’t, he’s not turning back again. “You came up about...here. You’re a good half a foot taller than that now.”

“I must’ve grown. While I was out.” It would stand to reason, right? 

He nods. It makes sense, and it’s not what he would’ve guessed. Out, he mouths, but doesn’t actually ask. “Do you want to get coffee, or tea? Food?” 

She’s not sure if she wants him to ask or not. “Food? All right, yes. Sure.”

“Food it is.” This? Will be his mental litmus test. Because if he’s lost his mind or in another simulation, only one person can converse with her at a time. 

If this is real, it’ll be different. And then he can sort out what he does or doesn’t want to ask right now. 

Fortunately there’s a decent restaurant that isn’t too packed just across the street from the hotel the convention is in.

And fortunately the waitress who takes their order asks for her order first. Whatever that does or doesn’t mean to him. Allison isn’t really sure what to say to him. What he wants to know.

There’s a good two minutes of silence after the waitress takes their orders, in which John attempts to memorize the folds of her skirt, the way she touches her napkin. “I suppose I should’ve done more research,” he starts quietly. “Into what remote intelligence could be. But the first article I came upon had to do with someone’s wife donating her husband’s neural patterns and that’s what they did with them and I think I couldn’t handle it. If...you were dead. Is that selfish?”

She shakes her head. She doesn’t think that it’s that selfish, anyway. “What would you have done, if you’d known? They’d said...thought that I wouldn’t wake up. Not ever.” 

“Visited. I guess? Acted like a lovestruck fool at the very least.”

“I’m not sure you could’ve. And I can’t imagine your girlfriend would’ve liked that.”

“Fianceé. Ex. Costa Rica is treating Riley well, however. I think she’s seeing someone, but is waiting to tell me until she’s sure about it.”

“That’s...good for her?” Unsure.

“It is.” A slight shrug. “Was that your confusion, that...terrified reaction? Because you knew I had someone waiting for me in the world?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve thought a lot about...the simulation, more than I think even my doctors realize. Picking it apart. You were confused. When I said I was infatuated. But you were afraid too. I couldn’t decide...can’t...if that was because of Riley or because of something else. I mean...you were what essentially held my nervous system in place. You know what I do at two in the morning when I can’t sleep and am seriously uninterested in creating anything and am alone. Maybe that disgusted you? Maybe I did? I don’t know. No one thinks of these things. No one asks one another what they do in private. But you know. Maybe knowing made me...unacceptable to you?”

She wonders a little why he thinks she’d try to find him if she thought any of that. “I...don’t have anyone. In there, or out here. I didn’t want to be alone. Which...I guess is selfish?” Considering. 

“Only in an evolutionary sense. Not that solitary people aren’t part of evolution either, just...” Waving his hand. “I’m rambling. Because I’m nervous. Because you’re here and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about whether or not I’d have had the nerve to ask you out on Friday or if I’d have wallowed in my own fear and you’re here. I might be freaking out. Slightly.”

“It’s okay.” She thinks, anyway. Hopes. “I would’ve said yes, I think. I just...they gave me your lectures? To listen to?”

“...they did?” A little surprised. “If I’d have known, I’d have recorded something for you.”

“The ones you did after you woke up.” She looks surprised. “You would have?”

“I never talked about you in them. I just...” Shaking his head. 

“Sort of. In the last one?” The one that woke her up. 

“The last one?” 

“The last lecture that they gave me. You talked about your phone.”

Blinking. “God. I nearly broke it the first time it rung after I got back. The doctor said that they’d started using neural shocks on top of the noise to get me to answer.”

“You didn’t want to answer?”

“No.” Shaking his head and waiting until all their food is served. 

“But you did, eventually.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Life in a simulation isn’t life.’

“But you were in it. For a while...or so I’m assuming.”

“Since I was 15, yeah. It’s not the same. I didn’t have a world, unless I was actively monitoring someone. They didn’t think I was going to wake up.”

“That sounds like a reason to have one, honestly.”

“Maybe. I don’t know who makes those decisions.”

“But now you’re awake. And here.” A little fixated on that idea, maybe. “Stay with me.”

“I wanted to see you.” Blinking. “Stay with you?”

“I...well.” Taking a breath. “That infatuation has gone nowhere. And I’m...I don’t live in the States anymore.”

“I’m supposed to. Until I’m done with physical therapy. And integration.” 

“I...hm.” Biting his lip again. “Well. How long is that? Where is that?”

“I don’t know how long. Or if it can be done elsewhere? Seattle.” 

He shuts his eyes. “Okay. Okay.”

“I want to. Stay with you.” She hesitates. “I have a room?”

He gives her an uncertain smile. “Are you sure you want to do that? I can...I’ll figure something out.”

She sort of is, but the uncertain smile sort of throws her. “I don’t know what to say to that.”

John reaches for her hand after a moment. “All right.”

“I don’t see what you see anymore.”

“Is that better or worse?” 

Hesitant laugh. “I’m not sure? I knew what to say when I did.” Even if it was vague.

“...you have a room,” he repeats, and squeezes her fingers. 

She squeezes back. “Yes. I do.”

“Did you want to go there, now? Or...later.” He can wait, he tells himself. 

“What do you want to do?” That’s important, she thinks. She knows.

“I want to spend time with you, I want...to get to know you. I want to wake up with you tomorrow and most of the days of the rest of my life.”

“I want those things to. I want...a lot of things.” Some of them don’t really have anything to do with him or even her. “I wish they’d told you I was real.”

“It’s fine that they didn’t.” If only because she’s here. 

“Only because I woke up.” 

“That’s enough for me, honestly.”

“You woke me up.” That’s important. To say, for him to know.

“...how?”

“The lectures. The audios, they said the emotional connection, the stimulus...helped? I didn’t have anyone else.”

Biting his lip again. “I...wow.”

“Is that too much to know?”

“No. No it’s not too much. Overwhelming. A bit, perhaps. But not too much.” It’s just strange to think that he could do that for anyone.

Smiling, slightly. “Do you want to keep talking here?”

“Are you actually hungry?”

“Not very much, no.”

“Then, no.” He’ll get it to go, at least. 

Maybe they can eat it later, then. “Okay.” Has she even been to the room she was given? Not yet. “Okay.”

John knows two things to be true: they probably won’t get to talk much at first, and he is not leaving until he knows exactly when he gets to see her again. 

When they’re outside waiting for the crosswalk, he kisses her cheek. 

She smiles at him, when he does that. Takes his hand and squeezes it again. “I’m glad I came to find you.”

“So am I.” 

She keeps on smiling, then. She’ll admit to being nervous, but she’s also glad. To be here. That he’s here. 

Is he nervous about this? Yes. Probably, anyway. “How long will you be in New York?” 

“At least until the conference is over.” Is she? Certainly.

“That’s another three days.” Well she said she was fifteen when she went to the hospital. 

That she did. “Is that long enough?”

Raising his eyebrows. “Uhm...that’s not enough, no. I mean...”

“I don’t know what to do about that.”

“We’ll figure it out. 

She nods. “Okay.” 

They’re both quiet on the way up to her room, with random fits of smiles and some slight giggling. This feels like school, somehow, at least to John. Maybe because of nervousness, the suddenness of it? Something like that. 

Maybe, something like that. Either way, she’s not complaining. She’s a little surprised at the room, not expecting anything quite as...fancy as the room she was given. Then again, she hasn’t been in a hotel room since she was 14. “Wow.”

“Did you come straight to the conference?” 

“Yes. I didn’t want to miss you.” She did leave her bags, however. At the desk.

Which means that they’ll follow the two of them up, once she checks in. “You could’ve had them page me.”

“I wanted to see you. You lecture. I didn’t want to interrupt it.”

“You really like them that much?”

“Yes. You’re very good at them. And they’re interesting?”

“I didn’t teach before. Did you know that?”

She shakes her head. “No. I didn’t.”

“I repaired art, instead.” A slight shrug. 

“The...simulation? Made you change that?”

“Well. I’d been offered the position before the hospital. I think it helped me decide?”

“Are you happy with it?”

“That’s hard to say.” Waiting at the door while her luggage is brought in. 

That only takes a few minutes, at least. “Why is that hard?”

“I haven’t been happy.” The sound of the door closing makes him jump, slightly. 

“Oh.” She thinks about that. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay.”

“I want you to be happy.”

“I’ll get there.” Putting his hands in his pockets and smiling a little. 

“I hope so.” Smiling back at him. 

“Are you happy?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t, exactly.”

“You smiled a lot. In the simulation.”

“I liked talking to you. Plus, I don’t know...it was easier?”

“Has it been hard, now?”

“I didn’t remember, in there. What had happened.” So, that’s probably a yes.

He reaches out and touches her cheek. “I’m sorry.” That she remembers now. 

Is she? Maybe. Maybe not. It might be better to remember, in the long run. “It’s okay.”

“Is it?” Kissing her, softly. 

Somehow, surprised by this kiss. “I think so. I hope so.”

“If it isn’t, hopefully it can get there.” Watching her expression. 

“That would be good.” Kissing him, this time. 

So that’s nice, isn’t it? He isn’t sure what else to say that won’t be repetitive or just...outright silly at this stage. It’s easier to just act. 

A lot easier. She doesn’t know if it’s obvious or not how little experience beyond kissing that she has, considering how old she was when she went into the hospital, but right now she doesn’t really care. Acting is easier. This moment is easier. 

He figures. Does he care? Not really. He isn’t exactly rushing things but there’s definitely a progression; too fast and he thinks that might make things cheaper somehow. He doesn’t want to rush her and make things awkward or uncomfortable. There are a lot of pauses, in various states of undress. Looking away and being pulled closer for it. Hesitation borne out of patience instead of uncertainty. It’s nice. 

Mostly he just wants her to be happy.

And she wants him to be happy. As well as wanting to be one of the things or people that makes him happy. She doesn’t think that’s too selfish of her. Not in this, not when they’re together. 

Since she’s almost sure he wants the same thing.

Afterwards he holds her and part of him wonders if his extreme disinterest in starting a new relationship - or even really sorting out what was wrong with the one he had - was because he was hoping for this. Either in reality or in his head. He knows the answer, and by the same token he knows he’s going to spend a lot of time afraid something will go wrong with it. “I might not get much sleep,” he confesses. Not that it’s late, but. 

She’d have to admit that she’s a little worried about it too. Since at the end of the conference, he’ll have to go home and she’ll have to go back to Seattle. “Me either.” 

Things he’s also thinking about. “I can visit. I have travel credit. There’s a teaching hospital...” He sighs. “I can’t leave my job. As much as I’d be willing to.”

“I know you can’t.” She watches him, though. “I won’t be in therapy forever.” 

“How’s your French?” 

“It’s not wonderful. Better than my Spanish.” 

“I can send you learner recordings. In the interim.”

“Okay. That will help.”

A slight smile. “It’s going to be difficult. That meantime.”

“Yes. But we have three days. And visits.” 

“Journal recordings and phone calls.” 

“Think that’ll be good enough?”

“It’s going to have to be. What other options are there?”

“None, I suppose?” Unless she can somehow get everything moved there.

Which, honestly, he’d be all for. Would her doctors though? Hard to say. “I can’t afford to fall apart if you’re coming home to me eventually.”

“Neither can I. So.”

“So, here we are.” Kissing her again. “It’ll be hard. Not impossible, just hard.”

Touching his cheek this time, staying close. “Maybe not even that long.”

“If we’re lucky.” Dare he hope. “Will you be okay with leaving? To move to a whole new country, a different language?”

She hopes. So why not him? “I think so. I don’t exactly have anyone here. A roommate.”

“At least you’re not still at the hospital all day every day.”

“Yes. And neither are you.”

“No, I’m not.”

“So there are good things.”

“You’re awake and I haven’t gone insane. They are the best things.”


End file.
